


Fever Stupid

by SunMoonAndSpoon



Category: Fruits Basket
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-02-28 12:19:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18756316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunMoonAndSpoon/pseuds/SunMoonAndSpoon
Summary: "This is absurd, and it can't possibly be real. What's real is Yuki alone in his apartment, waiting for Machi to decide they’re not on a break anymore, wondering if he even wants the break to end. What's real is Yuki watching Kyo and Tohru fall in love, get married, have children and grow old together, while he grows old alone."When Kyo comes down with the flu, Tohru asks Yuki to stay with her husband while she goes to work. Yuki has plenty of time - he and Machi are on an semi-permanent break - so he obliges. This is easier said than done, though, because he can't seem to ignore his love for both Tohru and Kyo.





	Fever Stupid

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JujYFru1T](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JujYFru1T/gifts).



> This was a commission for the lovely jujyfru1t!

 

“Stop fussing over me already, I’m fine!” 

So says the most pitiful, sickly-looking person that Yuki has ever seen. Except for Kyo’s eyes, which are ringed with black, his whole face is covered by a flu mask. There’s a fever patch stuck to his forehead, and what little can be seen of his face looks boiled. 

Yelling triggers a crackling coughing fit that leaves Kyo gasping and pounding his chest to try and get his breath back. Yuki winces in sympathy, but it’s Tohru who actually does something to help. 

She hands Kyo a glass of water, which he hesitates to accept, but does after he’s seized by more coughing. Tohru rubs his back, makes sympathetic clucking sounds and then eases him back onto the mound of pillows that litter their shared bed. His hands are shaking, so she holds the glass for him as he drinks. 

“Thanks for coming over, Yuki-kun,” says Tohru, flashing Yuki a wan smile. “I didn’t want to leave him alone when he’s so sick, but I couldn’t get anyone to take my shift at work. You did tell me that you’d gotten your flu shot, right?”

“I wouldn’t have come here if I hadn’t,” says Yuki. This is a lie. Thanks to Hatori’s rigorous medical care, he’s never gone a winter without getting a flu shot, but he would have come here even if that weren’t the case. He would have done anything Tohru had asked him to do.

Also, he would dropped everything to come help Kyo. That part is a little harder to admit to himself, but it’s true. 

“Great!” says Tohru, pulling up Kyo’s blankets so that they cover him completely. “I tried asking a few other people if they could come over, but Kazuma-san’s out of town with Hana-chan, Uo-chan has class, and Shigure-san is still getting over his own bout with the flu.” 

Yuki tries to interrupt to tell her that he’s happy to help, but she keeps going, hands flying in front of her face. “There are probably other people I should have asked before coming to you. I know you’re busy, and I know that you and Kyo don’t always get along.”

“We’re not teenagers anymore, we get along fine,” Kyo rasps, punctuating the sentence with a watery sniff. “But also, Tohru, _I’m_ fine. You can leave me by myself. I’m not dying or anything.”  
  
“I know you’re not dying, but you’re not well.” Tohru peels his sweat-slick hair from his forehead, and wipes his face off with a damp cloth. “If I leave you here by yourself, I’ll worry about you all day, and then I won’t be able to get any work done. Besides, it’ll be nice to have the company, won’t it?”  
  
Kyo replies by throwing his body sideways to avoid sneezing in Tohru’s face. She hands him a tissue, which he uses to blow his nose. This effort forces out another flurry of coughs. Throughout the whole process, she’s rubbing his back with the heel of her hands. 

“If you’re going to be freaked out about it, I guess I don’t have a choice,” wheezes Kyo. Tohru kisses him on the cheek and replaces his face mask, which was dislodged a moment ago. She thanks him for considering her feelings and he tells her that she’s his wife, of course he’s going to care how she feels.

The moment that Kyo says ‘you’re my wife,’ Yuki’s brain goes blurry with envy. He was expecting to feel this, but was hoping to control it better. He and Machi have been ‘on a break’ for the past six months or so, ostensibly so that she can focus on getting her PhD and Yuki can finally finish his long-delayed undergraduate degree, but really, Yuki just hasn’t been able to focus on her. Ever since Kyo and Tohru got married, his attention has been elsewhere. This is hardly something he wants to admit, even to himself.

As Tohru buzzes around the the apartment getting ready to leave for work, she tells Yuki about the medicine Hatori prescribed for Kyo, the rice porridge in the fridge that she made for him, where he can find extra tissues and cough drops and ibuprofen, and how often she wants him to check Kyo’s temperature. 

“I’m sorry, that’s a lot to ask, isn't it?” she says, sliding an arm into the sleeve of her purple pea coat. 

“No, you’re being perfectly reasonable. I’ll take good care of him, I promise. I’ll even text you to let you know how he’s doing, so that you won’t have to worry.” 

“Thank you. I know I’m being silly, it’s just that I still get so nervous when the people I love get sick. Especially respiratory illnesses…my dad, you know.” 

Yes, Yuki knows - the fact that Tohru’s father died of pneumonia comes up nearly every time someone gets sick. The fact that she can explain why she’s worried and ask other people to accommodate her fears - that’s something that Kyo gave to her. Something beautiful about their relationship. Yuki ought to feel happy for the two of them. He does, but also, he doesn’t.  
  
Tohru flashes Yuki a fireplace smile. “You’re the best, Yuki-kun. I’m counting on you!” 

After locking Tohru out of the apartment, he heads back into the bedroom, where Kyo is sitting up in bed, doubled over in a fit of barking coughs. Though Yuki knows that it will probably ease some of Kyo’s discomfort, he can’t bring himself to rub his back as Tohru had done. 

Instead, he heads to the kitchen and puts the kettle on. The kettle is cream colored with brown cat silhouettes dancing around the bottom. That Kyo owns something so adorable is a wonder to Yuki. He knows that Tohru is probably the one who bought it, but before she came into his life, Kyo would have probably smashed a thing like this against a wall. 

Actually, this isn’t the only thing in their kitchen that’s decorated with cats. The calendar hanging on their wall has a cat for each month, and the two aprons hanging on a wall hook have cats on them too. One of these aprons seems to belong to Kyo, implying that he cooks now, too. Maybe both of them cook together. 

Yuki has been eating from the same container of takeout yakisoba for the past two days. He hasn’t cooked anything for months. Alone in his apartment, there never seems to be much of a point.

The kettle screeches, snapping him out of his self-pity. He fixes a cup of rose oolong tea, realizing as he’s doing so that he has no idea what kind of tea Kyo likes. He recalls him saying once that he hated tea and only liked coffee, but that was when they were teenagers and Kyo hated everything that Yuki liked no matter what it was. 

They aren’t teenagers anymore, they’re grown adults with their own lives that are completely disconnected from one another. Yuki is a grown adult who is still feeling sorry for himself, but at least he’s brewing tea now instead of staring into space doing nothing. 

Back in the bedroom, Kyo’s arm is slung over his forehead, and his eyes are closed. He opens them when he hears the mug of tea hit the beside table, then says in a raspy, strained voice, “thank you.”

“You must be really sick if you’re actually being polite to me,” says Yuki. As soon as he says it, he wishes he hadn’t. The two of them are supposed to have moved past pointlessly antagonizing each other. Politeness characterizes most of their interactions - in fact, they’re often too polite to each other for fear of reopening old wounds. 

That’s the problem - they no longer speak like they know each other.

“Oh shut up,” groans Kyo, dragging himself upward to sit and drink the tea. “Stop trying to pick a fight with me or I’ll kick your ass.”  
  
“You’re hardly in any condition to do that.” 

“I’m not about to let some idiot virus stop me.” The idiot virus stops him from talking for a few seconds while he coughs, forcing him to nearly spill the cup of tea he’s still holding. 

“Careful!” Yuki heaves a sigh. “Kyo, why didn’t you get a flu shot? You could have avoided this if you just showed up to get one when Hatori told you to.”

“I was going to, but Tohru's favorite author was doing a book signing and she had to work. I was on line until like 9 PM, and Hatori made me reschedule. I got sick before he could do it.” 

Resentment feels like nausea, and Yuki has to swallow hard to get rid of it. He could have waited on that line for Tohru’s book. He’d known about the signing, and he hadn’t had anything to do that day. He’d assumed that Kyo and Tohru would be going together, that if he went he would be in the way. That Kyo would rather spend eight hours alone than contact Yuki for some company makes his head hurt. 

“That’s stupid,” he says, wincing at the rancor in his voice. “You could have gone to another doctor. You could have even gotten it done at the drug store. Hatori hasn't been our only option since the curse lifted. You were just being irresponsible." 

“Yeah, because lecturing me is really going to change anything.” Kyo grabs a tissue from the box on the bedside table and noisily blows his nose. “I feel like shit right now, what the hell are you doing trying to make it worse for? Did I do something to you?” 

Every barricade holding back Yuki’s feelings break down at once.  
  
“You didn’t,” he says, clutching Kyo’s blanket so that his knuckles turn white. “I’m sorry. I just — it’s hard, seeing you and Tohru be together.”

Kyo asks why. Thanks to congestion and raspiness accentuating his voice, whatever tone the _why_ might have had is lost. It’s hard to know how to reply with no emotion to work from, but he plows ahead anyway. He used to know how Kyo felt about everything and not care. Just because he cares now doesn’t mean he has to act on it. 

Then Kyo says, “aren’t you still with Machi? What’s going on with that?”

“Oh god, you don’t even know that much. That’s my fault. I’ve been isolating myself.” Yuki laughs bitterly, paws at his own face. Kyo grabs him by the wrist, drags his hand down so that it touches the bedspread. 

“Don’t touch your face while you’re hanging out with a sick person, idiot.” He nods toward a bottle of hand sanitizer that’s on his bedspread table. “Use that. I don’t want you getting sick.”  
  
“Right,” says Yuki, cleaning his hands with the stinging goop. “It’ll scare Tohru, if I do.”  
  
“That’s not the only thing that matters, dumbass! You think the only thing I care about is Tohru?” He stops talking, the outburst leaving him hacking and gasping for air. Yuki rubs his back, presses the cooling cup of tea into his hands. 

After a sip, he says, “really, Yuki. Do you think I don’t care about what happens to you?”  
  
“You don’t, though. I don't mean that in a negative way — I don’t blame you for it. But we’ve barely had anything to do with each other since you and Tohru got married.” He stops, bites his lip. “We’ve never gotten along particularly well anyway. I thought you were happy to get away from me.” 

“You're stupid. I would have married you both if I could.” 

“I’ll forgive you for that ridiculous remark because you’re running a fever, but you shouldn’t say things like that. What if I thought you were telling the truth?”  
  
“I don’t know, what if? I’d kiss you right now if I weren’t contagious.”  
  
“I had a flu shot, remember? But you’re just saying that because you’re sick. There’s no way you’d ever actually want to kiss me. And what makes you think I want to kiss you?” 

“I’m saying it because there’s no point in not saying it. If you think it’s stupid we can just pretend it’s my fever. But I’ve loved you for a decade. Even though you have a smug face and you think you're too good to wear a t-shirt. Tohru has too — since almost the first time she met you.”  
  
This is absurd, and it can't possibly be real. What's real is Yuki alone in his apartment, waiting for Machi to decide they’re not on a break anymore, wondering if he even wants the break to end. What's real is Yuki watching Kyo and Tohru fall in love, get married, have children and grow old together, while he grows old alone. 

“You’re lying,” Yuki says, surprised by the lump that hardens in his throat. “I don’t know why you’re doing this, but it’s cruel.”  
  
“I’m not lying to you you stupid rat!” The outburst triggers a coughing fit, which leaves him shaking and gasping for breath. “Stop making me yell,” he groans. 

“Obviously I’m not very considerate. Why do you allegedly love me?” Yuki practically snarls that last part. His guts are a tangle of rage, and he hates it. Why is he angry at Kyo for saying the thing he always wished he would? Why can’t he just accept that sometimes, good things happen?  
  
Because, obviously, he’s a filthy rat who no one could ever love. A freak whose only purpose is to lay down in a dark room and let himself be whipped. Even though he doesn’t transform anymore, even though Akito has apologized for everything, even though it’s over and they’re all supposed to be happy now, even though neither Kyo nor Tohru have ever seen him that way in their lives. 

“What do you want me to do, give you a long flowery speech about my feelings? If I knew how to do that I wouldn’t have waited until I was fever-stupid to tell you.”  
  
“If you can’t even give me a reason, then I don’t have any cause to believe you, do I?”  
  
Kyo grabs Yuki by the shoulders, then immediately loses strength and pulls him on top of him. His skin is hot and sweaty, and his breath is coming out in ragged puffs. He says, “unless you object, I’m going to kiss you right now and prove it.”  
  
With no objections left to make, Yuki pulls down Kyo’s face mask, and lets him slip his tongue into his mouth. Within seconds, the two of them are making out. There’s no build-up, no hesitation, just two hungry mouths attacking each other, two pairs of arms gripping the other person’s body so tightly it's as if they’re trying to absorb it into their flesh. They kiss until Yuki can’t breathe and Kyo is practically melting into the bed. 

“Are you okay?” Yuki asks. “That was too much for you, wasn’t it? We shouldn't have done this, not while you’re so sick.”  
  
“We were never going to do it otherwise,” Kyo says, pulling Yuki so close to his chest that he can hear his heart slamming around in his chest. Then, just as suddenly, he lets him go. “Sorry — I need to sleep. When Tohru gets back, we’ll talk more.” 

 

~`~`~

 

Yuki intends to use the down time to read a few chapters from _Kokoro_ , the Natsume Soseki book he’s supposed to be reading for school. Instead, he winds up laying down in Kyo’s bed, holding him as his fever sends shivers skittering up and down his frame. As he tries to stroke comfort into Kyo’s body, his eyes start to feel sandbagged, and he no longer wants to think, so he drifts off to sleep. 

He wakes to the sound of the door creaking open, of someone shuffling around in the entrance, of a toilet flushing and a sink running. Then, rapid footsteps toward the bedroom. Yuki starts sitting up, but stops when he notices that Kyo’s arm is slung across his chest. 

Tohru. Looking luminous as ever despite her rain-wet hair. Yuki hadn’t realized it was storming outside. 

At first, she ignores Yuki completely, and busies herself with taking Kyo’s temperature, replacing his fever patch, and sweeping his used tissues into the garbage can. Once she finishes her ministrations, she rubs on some hand sanitizer, then says, “Yuki-kun?”  
  
Awake now, Kyo moves his arm and allows Yuki to sit up. “I told her what we talked about,” Kyo rasps.  
  
“Right,” says Tohru, hand reaching out to clasp his. “Yuki-kun, the reason I chose Kyo was because you told me that you saw me as a motherly figure, not as a partner. You seemed to be in love with Machi. I didn’t want to get in the way of anything, and I was in love with Kyo too. But if none of that had happened, I don’t know what I would have done. I’ve always loved you both.” 

Eyes squeezed shut and hand trembling under Tohru’s, Yuki says, “I was, I think. I wasn't lying to you, exactly. But Machi and I have grown apart recently - and I never stopped loving you. _Either_ of you. I just said the thing about you being a motherly figure because I needed to rationalize giving up and letting you and Kyo be happy together. And I told Kyo that I hated him over and over again even though he was one of the most important people in my life…” 

After his speech, Yuki’s face is buried in his hands again. Kyo yanks his arm down, yelling at him about germs.  
  
“You kissed me!” snaps Yuki. “If I’m going to get sick, _that_ will be why!” 

Tohru’s cheeks turn strawberry red. She yelps, “Kyo-kun, you kissed Yuki-kun without me?!”

Yuki blinks, unsure of how to respond to this. 

“Oh, Yuki-kun, I’m sorry, this must sound _so_ strange. Kyo-kun and I have been talking for ages about what we’d do if we ever got the chance to tell you how we felt about you.” 

Tohru takes Kyo’s hand in her free one. “The plan was that we were both supposed to kiss you at the same time - and more importantly, hug you! We added that part after the curse broke.” 

After a brief coughing fit, Kyo yells, “I had to do it, otherwise he wasn’t going to believe me!” 

  
“Kyo-kun, don’t shout, you’ll hurt your throat. I should make you some more tea…” 

“Stop trying to take care of other people and act on your feelings already!” 

The version of Tohru who existed when Yuki first met her would never be able to do this. It’s thanks to Kyo that she can straddle Yuki, wrap him in her arms and press her lips against his so hard it’s almost like she’s trying to absorb his soul through her mouth. It’s thanks to Kyo that Yuki can kiss her back, noses bumping and hands threading her hair. Neither of them would have ever had the courage to do this is not for him. 

Kyo grabs them both by the arm, pulls them down onto the bed with him. Tohru yelps at the impact, then laughs. Yuki tenses up, then lets himself relax into the embrace. The three of them are tangled together on Kyo’s bed, kissing each other on the hand and face and lips.  
  
Yuki doesn't care if this breaks up Kyo and Tohru's marriage, or if Machi will hate him, or if his flu shot doesn’t protect him and he’s flattened by disease. He doesn’t care that Kyo’s elbow is digging into his ribs or that Tohru’s hair is in his mouth. Nothing matters, because for the first time in years, he feels like he might have a shot at happiness. 


End file.
